Free Against All Things Ending by Stephen R. Donaldson Page A

antagonists—could match the strange and singular insight of the Ranyhyn. But they all were gifted with health-sense; percipience. The Elohim ’s announcement that Linden had invoked the destruction of the Earth may have sounded abstract to Liand and the Ramen; even to the Humbled and Stave. Still they knew that they had witnessed an irreversible catastrophe; that she had vindicated every warning, fulfilled every dire prophecy—
    When your deeds have come to doom, as they must —
    You have it within you to perform horrors .
    How had the Harrow and even the Viles known how badly she would fail her loves?
    But Linden did not allow herself to hide her head as she approached the krill and Covenant’s limp form. She did not intend to conceal her fatal heart behind a veil of shame. If she had indeed roused the Worm of the World’s End , she meant to bear as much of the cost as her flesh could endure.
    Bhapa and Pahni did not meet her eyes. Apparently they could not. Pahni clung to Liand, hiding her shock and terror against his shoulder. Bhapa studied the grass at his feet as though he feared that Linden’s gaze would make him weep. But the bandage over Mahrtiir’s face was too mundane to conceal the ferocity of his glower.
    Stave had regained his impassivity. Perhaps he had never lost it. His stance was a query, not a repudiation. But the Humbled were not so restrained. Behind their familiar ready poise, they seemed to tremble with the force of their eagerness to strike her down.
    Covenant had told them to choose her. They did not appear inclined to heed him.
    Around the Humbled, the Ranyhyn remained watchful, wary; prepared to defend Linden again. As Linden drew near, Hyn nickered softly. The mare’s call sounded sorrowful and resigned, as if she blamed herself. In spite of what Linden had done, the horses held fast to their fidelity. Perhaps they still trusted her. If they considered Infelice or the Harrow relevant to the fate of the Land—or to their own imperatives—they did not show it.
    Of them all, however, all of Linden’s friends, only Liand looked at her and spoke.
    Every hint of the young dignity which he had displayed upon other occasions was gone. The stature of his Stonedownor heritage had deserted him. He had replaced his Sunstone in its pouch: he did not reach for it now. Linden had never seen him look so small, or so lorn. The raven wings of his eyebrows articulated his uncertainty.
    She expected him to plead for an explanation; a justification. Hell, she half expected him to castigate her. He and everyone else had earned that right. But he did not.
    Instead he asked, hoarse with empathy, “Will you not heal him?” Helplessly he indicated Covenant. “Linden, the pain of his incarnation wracks him. He cannot contain the greatness of his spirit. There is also an illness which I do not comprehend, though it appears paltry by the measure of his rent mind.
    “The Staff of Law lies there.” Liand pointed at the shaft of wood, iron-shod and ebony and runed. “Will you not grant him the benison of its flame? He has suffered beyond my power to imagine it.” His tone held no accusation. “Will you not ease his plight?”
    Linden shook her head. She was too full of dismay to falter. And the first shock of horror had passed. She was beginning to regain her ability to consider what she did.
    “Don’t you think,” she asked Liand precisely, “that I’ve done enough harm already?”
    Covenant was not warded by any power which might repulse her touch. But she could not affect the state of his mind—his spirit—without entering into him with her health-sense. Without possessing him. Long ago, she had done such things: she knew now that they were violations as profound as any rape. In addition, she could not foresee the effects of any change that she might make in Covenant’s truncated transcendence. Years of experience had taught her that any sentience which did not heal itself might be forever flawed.